The Power of Mercy

by Fiona Zedde

  Breathless, she dropped her cheek against Xóchitl’s thigh. When she was able to move again, she looked up the long, lean length of Xóchitl, at the untamed jungle of her pubic hair, her belly with its hint of roundness, the breasts bared by the sweater and bra pushed up to her neck and hanging down her back like a cape. Her skin was hot, nearly roasting under Mai’s cheek.

  This feels so perfect. So right.

  Mai closed her eyes. This could really be nothing, she thought. Just sex. An illusion of compatibility. Only two women sating a mutual need. But Xóchitl’s hand drifted to the back of Mai’s head in a delicate caress, continuing down to her neck and following the curve of one ear with her thumb. Mai shuddered, weakening at the unfamiliar touch. It unerringly found the vulnerable places that turned her to jelly.

  This is almost as good as the sex, Mai thought, dazed. Of all the things she’d never had but somehow missed, the biggest one was tenderness. The desire and willingness of a lover—of anyone—to comfort and soothe her.

  She was in so much trouble with this woman.

  Mai licked her lips, which had gone dry from her panting breaths. “So, do you think you know me better now?”

  A smile took the corners of Xóchitl’s mouth. “Not yet, but the day is still young.” Thankfully, her hand stopped its lingering caress, and Mai could think again. But the hand disappeared from her ear, only to drag Mai to her feet. Xóchitl was surprisingly strong. “Show me your room,” she said.

  In Mai’s bed, they fucked like it was going out of style, Xóchitl and her relentless fingers plunging deep inside Mai again and again to mine orgasm after orgasm from her body, barely letting Mai touch her again after that first time against the door. Only when Mai was tired, wrung out, and used up, her body smeared with fluids and the bed one giant wet spot, did Xóchitl push her onto her back and ride Mai’s hip until her body shuddered with satisfied lust. Mai had stopped thinking after the fourth orgasm, her brains no doubt leaked from between her thighs to mingle with the other fluids on the sheets. She barely protested when Xóchitl lifted her in her arms again, shocking Mai with her easy strength, and gently placed her on the love seat to rummage through the linen closet for fresh sheets. Xóchitl changed them and tossed the sullied ones into the laundry hamper before reinstalling them both back in the bed.

  Mai rolled her head lazily to the side and noticed with a far-off sense of surprise that it was nighttime. Outside the window, her little part of the city was enshrouded in darkness, the stars like pinpricks in the heavens. She had work in the morning and a visit to make to her mother’s house. But the thought rolled through her mind, separate from any urgency. Thanks to the faint pulse beats of her satisfaction still throbbing between her thighs, she was as weak as a day-old kitten and more sated than she remembered being in a long time.

  “How do you feel?” Xóchitl’s breath whispered against the back of her neck, making Mai shiver.

  She turned her head and sighed, overwhelmed by the warmth in solar-dark eyes close enough for her to drown in. Nothing in the last few months of knowing Xóchitl Bentley had led her to believe she’d ever get such a look from her.

  “I’m great,” Mai murmured, the words barely above a whisper. “Tired. You wore me out.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re too pent-up.” Xóchitl drifted her fingers down the center of Mai’s chest, a barely-there touch that comforted instead of aroused. “Your mind never shuts down. You never relax.”

  Mild alarm shivered up Mai’s spine. “You don’t know me that well.”

  “Not yet, but I’m beginning to.” Xóchitl gave that almost-smile of hers again. “And I like what I know so far.” Her fingers circled Mai’s belly button, the touch like indistinct tongues of flame on her skin. A pleasure that hinted of more to come. “What are you always thinking so much about? Do these things keep you up at night?”

  The questions gave Mai pause, pulling her from her lethargy with an unpleasant twist in her stomach. They were intimate, I’m-staying-longer-than-tonight questions. Not a good idea. The touch on Mai’s belly disturbed her in a different way now. She squirmed against the sheets, wanting to move away, but not quite able to manage it.

  Unwise work romance aside, it was dangerous for a human to come into her life. Her family would crush Xóchitl. Mai should push her away now, tell her to get out before they got any deeper into…whatever this was. But when Mai opened her mouth, honesty of a sort fell out.

  “I think about my family,” Mai said reluctantly. “I think about how things can go wrong.” She flicked a look at Xóchitl’s face and saw her looking back with complete attentiveness. Mai dipped her gaze away, falling into the reluctant memory of the first woman who’d looked at her that way. Her first girlfriend, a powerful Meta she’d known in boarding school. Someone outside the family who Mai had thought she could trust. The only thing she’d gotten from that relationship was more pain and proof that no Meta could be trusted with someone weaker than themselves. “The usual glass-half-empty thing. Nothing you want to hear about,” Mai finished.

  “Try me,” Xóchitl said. She spread her palm flat over Mai’s stomach, a proprietary gesture amplified by the glowing warmth in her eyes. “You might be surprised.”

  But Xóchitl’s questions and Mai’s memory of the girl who’d nearly broken her in boarding school turned her mind back toward other cruelties and the decision she’d made earlier that day to turn over all the information she found on Absolution to her mother.

  The “mercy” her family would show Absolution wasn’t one the killer deserved. No more than Mai had deserved the type of mercy her family and other Powerful Metas had shown her during her lifetime among them. Their mercy had nearly destroyed her. With the conscience she’d grown in the wild, could she throw Absolution to them? And if she could, did she deserve to have a woman like Xóchitl in her bed?

  A low sound of alarm broke into the room, like an animal scenting a trap. Mai abruptly realized she had made that sound. Xóchitl’s hand tightened on her belly.

  “Are you okay?”

  Mai shook her head. “No…I…” She sat up and pulled away from Xóchitl, the sheets rustling beneath her suddenly restless body. Uncertainty and the beginnings of fear turned her fingers cold. And she did what she’d always done in moments like these. She ran.

  “I have to get ready for work tomorrow.”

  Xóchitl raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Is that my cue to go?” But there was worry in her eyes. “Because it’s okay. I know I was being intrusive. It only makes sense for you to withdraw. My apologies.”

  Mai bit her tongue to stop her own apology. She’d been like this her entire adult life, a suspicious and guarded creature her family had created. It didn’t make any sense to apologize for taking care of herself. She got out of bed and pulled on her robe. “I’ll see you at school?”

  “Of course.” Xóchitl sat up in the bed, then parted her lips like she wanted to say something else. But in the end, she only shrugged and reached for her clothes.

  She didn’t make a production out of leaving and didn’t try to hug Mai on her way out the door. She just touched her elbow, a caress that was oddly more intimate than any kiss.

  “Get some rest,” Xóchitl said and then was gone.

  But when Mai went back to bed, rest would not come.

  It was a rainy day when Mai walked up the main staircase of the house she never wanted to set foot in again. Her tread was quiet against the marble floors, though her key in the door had been warning enough to those inside that she was there. At this time of day, only the servants wandered the large house. Her mother was in her downtown Atlanta office, and her father was off doing one of his favorite things—escaping his wife.

  Ethan was nowhere in sight, but after the stunt he pulled the day before, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he suddenly sho
wed up. She needed to get what she came for and leave. Quickly.

  After her only class of the day, Mai had left the university campus, thankful that none of her students signed up for office hours. And even more thankful she didn’t see Xóchitl again. Mai wanted her too much. Even more now that she’d had a taste. The woman was a temptation and a distraction she couldn’t afford to indulge in.

  She adjusted the dark-green leather jacket over her shoulders and kept going. Her palms were damp and clammy from learned fear, but she curled her fingers into her jacket pockets and walked steadily down the brightly lit hallway toward Stephen’s office. Despite his fucked-up extracurricular activities, he’d chosen to live in the same house as his big sister and her family, maintaining only a small cabin in upstate New York as a lair.

  The doorknob to his office moved easily beneath her hand, a cool, golden latch on the old-fashioned French doors. The frosted-glass doors gave a false impression of transparency. Mai breathed in the scent of antique wood and furniture polish and leaned back against the closed door, lashes fluttering but her heart as steady as she could make it without being dead. The office was just like she remembered.

  An instant of mad panic scuttled under her chest, and she tightened her hand around the door handle at her back. The office was empty. It was just her. Not even his ghost lingered there. Another breath and she moved forward to the desk. She stood in the quiet for a moment longer, looking over the wide expanse of the neatly organized workspace without touching anything. She needed to be strategic and not rifle through it like a common thief, especially since what she was looking for wasn’t particularly common.

  Her eyes flitted around the room.

  The desk and its five drawers. A wooden file cabinet. A painting on the wall that concealed a safe the whole family knew about. His computer, dark and quiet, on top of the desk. Those were the places she needed to search.

  Okay.

  Mai pulled a flash drive from her pocket and sat down at the desk to see what she could find. She booted up the computer, waited past the Windows logo, then dove in as soon as the wallpaper came up, her eyes skimming quickly across the image: a wide shot of a dock at sunset, two silhouetted figures sitting at the edge of the water, their legs dangling. One figure was short and slender, the other was twice its size, looming and spindly as an oak in winter. She knew that dock. She knew the nearby cabin.

  It was only a quick glance, but it was enough to twist Mai’s stomach.

  You don’t have time for this.

  She didn’t have the luxury of tripping down memory lane with the ghost of her dead uncle looming over her shoulder.

  Fingers quick on the keyboard and mouse, she cloned the computer, sending the copy directly to the machine sitting on her desk across town. Then, just to satisfy her paranoid heart, she copied every Word and Excel file she ran across and saved them to a flash drive. While the drive finished copying, she looked through the drawers, the desk, the cabinet, being careful to put everything back where she found it, ultimately finding nothing until all that was left was the wall safe.

  She stood in front of it, a fist clenched at her side. If the safe was empty, then this was it. She’d have nowhere else to search unless she went to the cabin in New York. Her stomach turned to lead at the thought of setting foot in that cabin again.

  “Are you sure she came this way?”

  Mai cursed. Her sister, Abi. And she didn’t sound far enough away.

  She fumbled with the heavy painting, almost dropping it on her foot. With another soft curse, she took a breath, then forced steadiness into her fingers hovering over the safe’s combination lock.

  Outside the door and down the hall, she could hear her sister talking again, probably to one of the maids who must’ve seen Mai pass through the house. She should have known her unexpected appearance would raise a flag or two. Just not so soon. A quick glance at her watch told her she’d barely been in the house ten minutes.

  Behind her, the computer screen flashed with a dialogue box telling her the download was complete. She grabbed the flash drive and shoved it deep into her jeans pocket.

  Back at the wall safe, with the clock ticking away the last of her private time with the combination lock, she extended her fingers again, trusting her instincts, spinning the combination for the numbers she knew were important to her uncle, the birthdate of her cousin, the child his human wife never allowed to live with him no matter how much the family threatened her.

  03 18 01.

  But the safe remained firmly locked.

  Down the hall, the conversation between Abi and the maid was wrapping up. And her sister’s footsteps began a purposeful tap toward where Mai warred with the memory of her uncle. Fuck. She’d been so sure that was it.

  Then she remembered how he preferred to write out dates.

  03 18 20 01.

  A breath hissed from her throat when the lock released with a click. But she didn’t waste time celebrating her success, only shoved aside what she wasn’t looking for—half a dozen bricks of cash, a large baggie of coke, a few jewelry boxes—to scan over contracts, photos, anything else he thought worth safeguarding. Her hand shoved aside yet another jewelry box—there were over a dozen of them—when the box rattled in a way it shouldn’t have. Mai frowned. She grabbed the box and flipped it open.

  Instead of diamonds or rubies, the large ring box was neatly filled with flash drives, one tiny red drive slotted into each space where a ring would be.

  Another breath. A hesitation. The sound of quiet footsteps heading down the hallway.

  Making a quick decision, she flipped open all the boxes. Every one of them held flash drives. She grabbed a drive from each box and shoved the stolen drives into the inside pocket of her jacket, snapped the boxes closed, and stacked them the way she’d found them, then used her cell phone to snap photos of the pictures he’d kept in the safe. She slid everything back into place, clicked the safe door closed, and rehung the picture.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Mai didn’t flinch. She calmly turned from the painting, a portrait of her uncle and her mother as children. It was a copy of a photograph taken on the front porch of the house they’d been brought up in. Two children laughing, their eyes twinkling in conspiracy as they looked at each other in what Mai assumed was a candid moment. It was one of the few times she’d seen her mother really smiling.

  “Hey, Abi.” Mai sauntered away from the painting and gave her sister the most casual of glances before walking to the balcony of her uncle’s study. “I heard about Uncle Stephen’s death.”

  “Yes, we all did. The funeral is on Wednesday.” Her sister walked further into the study but didn’t close the door behind her. “You’re probably glad he’s dead, anyway.”

  Mai shrugged, not denying it. “It feels strange that he won’t be in this place anymore. So unreal.”

  Such a relief. She stepped outside into the wet morning. The smell and sound of the rain helped to calm the remnants of Mai’s nerves. She drew in a deep lungful of the fresh air.

  “Are you coming to the funeral?” Abi asked.

  “No.” Mai had never been a hypocrite. Although she never talked with her sister about her feelings for Stephen Redstone, she’d never hidden them.

  “I didn’t think so. Just thought I’d ask.” Abi shrugged, and the already precariously perched sleeve of her blouse fell off one shoulder.

  She wore one of her typical hippie outfits, an oversized crocheted blouse and jean shorts, today complete with a crown of flowers braided through her thick hair. Although she was twenty-two and recently graduated from a Swiss university, she looked all of sixteen. She was a self-proclaimed sophisticate who’d spent most of her life away at boarding school, something their father had insisted on. She was both better and worse off for it.

  “I thought you were heading back to Switzerland.” Ma
i leaned over the railing, looking down onto the waters of their Olympic-sized pool, rippling from the steady patter of raindrops. She briefly wondered if anyone swam in the pool anymore.

  “I am, but not until after the funeral.” Like a good daughter, Abi had come back to Atlanta for the Conclave. Their mother must have found out about Stephen’s death within hours of it happening and asked Abi to stay for the funeral too. Mandaia knew better than to ask Mai to come. If she came anywhere near that funeral, she’d probably set fire to the casket and all the hypocrites there.

  “I still don’t get why you hate him so much, Mai,” Abi said. “He was our uncle.” The concern in her sister’s voice was sweet, but it made Mai choke. Stephen didn’t deserve any sweetness in death, just as he hadn’t deserved any in life.

  Mai winced around her smile. “I’m glad you don’t understand, Abi. I really am.”

  Her sister stepped close enough to affectionately bump Mai’s shoulder and offer a small smile. Only ten years separated them, but it might as well have been a hundred. Abi had power. She’d had the privilege of growing up away from home and getting the version of their mother the rest of the world saw, smiling and tender, the successful multibillionaire businesswoman and former talk show queen who was proud of her children and playfully chagrined at their choices not to pursue careers in any of the family businesses.

  Abi didn’t want to come back to America, and except for visits like this one, she didn’t have to. She had a gorgeous European boyfriend, school friends who invited her skiing every winter, and a childhood kept relatively safe in the fortress of one of the best Swiss boarding schools for Meta children. Some days, Mai tried not to envy her.

  “Sometimes I wish I felt more a part of this family,” Abi said a few minutes into their loaded silence.